MSFS load hangup

[DenraelG]

Thank you for using the Bug section, using templates provided will greatly help the team reproducing the issue and ease the process of fixing it.

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons? If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the Community Support section.

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

Sim hangs at a promotional screen while loading. Always hangs at the same point, ad infinitum… I actually let it run an hour with no progress. This 100% happened after I downloaded the latest sim update.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

MSFS load.mp4

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Notice in the video that it “blows through” a couple of screens before it gets to the hang screeen.

Many issues may be due to an outdated graphics card. Please state your Graphics Card Driver Manufacturer (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) and Version (Learn how to find your current graphics card driver version):

NVIDIA 4070ti driver 551.61 - Tried newer and older driver versions to no avail

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

MSI desktop, i7 13700, 32 GB - MSI G321CU display

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

1.36.2.0 w/most recent update

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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

[TheSevenflyer]

Does it do this if you start the sim in safe mode?

[DementedCorn327]

Hi @DenraelG ,

We’ve moved your topic into the User Support Hub.

The Bug Reporting Hub is for posting suspected or confirmed bugs that other users are able to reproduce without duplicating an existing bug report. Using the template or providing all the relevant information about your bug and sim setup is required in order to provide valuable information, feedback, and replication steps to our test team.

If you are not sure if your issue is a bug or need further input from the community, please use the User Support Hub category. If the community can replicate your issue, first search the Bug category to see if there’s an existing topic. If it already exists, contribute to that report. Duplicate bug reports will be closed.

If you believe it is a new report and no duplicate exists, then create a new bug topic using the provided topic template.

All issues caused by or involving third-party addons/mods should be reported to the third-party developer. Assure that no addons/mods are used when reporting issues in Bug Reports.

[DenraelG]

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even ask… that screen is one of 2 or more screens that pop up and disappear in the blink of an eye. You can see this happen in the video I posted.

[TheSevenflyer]

Ok, so you’ve stated you removed your addons, so I presume your Community Folder is empty.
If so, next thing I would suggest is to log out and uninstall the XBox App, and Gaming Services.
Reboot and reinstall both, and log in.
Then try the sim.

[DenraelG]

Done… no change. We are still stuck at the Dune promo screen.

[TheSevenflyer]

Allright, on to the checklists:

How to troubleshoot crashing on the loading screen issues

[DenraelG]

Check, check, and double-check. Nope. Absolutely no change.

[TheSevenflyer]

If you are this far along, and went through all those and the links with no luck, I would recommend you “Submit a Request” for Zendesk support from the Support tab at the top of each forum page.

[DenraelG]

Will do… thanks for your help. I really want to avoid reloading the whole sim, if I can help it. I am sorta remote and the typical 12-15 Mbps download speed I get out here makes a reload somewhat painful.

[GHOSTDOG7473002]

This just started happening to me tonight. Status bar went all the way to the end and hung up. The first time I shut it down through task manager. I restarted the sim the 2nd time and the same thing happened, but this time I just waited and after about 3 or 4 min it loaded to the home screen. Hope this helps.

[hobanagerik]

If you’ve emptied your Community folder already, that’s fair enough.

But there is a way to force Safe Mode.

Use that code to create a file called “running.lock” in that location, and it will force the sim to ask you if you want to launch in safe mode or not. Copied below for convenience.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/command-line-parameter-to-start-the-sim-in-safe-mode/535418/9

copy nul > %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\running.lock

Assuming it can get that far of course.

[DenraelG]

Just for the record, the community folder has never had anything in it… I have not downloaded anything that would have put anything there.
Just for kicks, I did fool around with the running.lock file, with no effect whatsoever… it still doesn’t ask me about Safe Mode on load. I do find it interesting though, that the sim is (properly, I assume?) writing running.lock when it loads. But regardless of how you kill it after it hangs… talking about my current situation… it erases the file on exit. When it is operating normally and you kill it via, for instance task manager, should it not keep running.lock intact?

[SmotheryVase665]

Hi @DenraelG Can you post a screenshot of that shows the loading bar? I can’t see it in the video you posted.

I noticed that @LemonBurrito83 in this thread might have the same or similar issue. I’m curious as to whether your PC is hanging at about the same spot.

[DenraelG]

Well… it’s not quite that simple. Here is a screenshot of what the blue bar looks like when it first lands on this screen. The blue bar very slowly progresses to “full” in about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing happens after that… you can let it set there for hours and nothing changes on the screen.

[SmotheryVase665]

Thanks for posting the screenshot. That, plus these two comments you made:

@DenraelG

I am sorta remote and the typical 12-15 Mbps download speed I get out here

plus:

@DenraelG

The blue bar very slowly progresses to “full” in about 10 minutes

Suggests to me that you might be having timeout issues with the MS servers. This is how we can check to see if this is the case:

1. In the taskbar, click on the network icon:
   
   and disconnect from the Internet.

2. Start MSFS. I’ve disabled the opening credit movies by adding -FastLaunch -FastStart to my MSFS shortcut, so can’t recall when they are shown - I think they are the first thing you see, so afterwards (if you have not disabled them), on your PC the Splash screen should appear. When it does, after a few seconds, you’re going to get this warning message:
   

   

3. Click OK
   Be patient & wait. At this point MSFS usually tries to contact servers, but obviously cannot. The splash screen will remain, but appear “frozen”. Be patient. After about a minute or two (on my PC), the blue loading bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. MSFS will start loading files from the drive where you installed the program.

4. Once completed, the Welcome screen should appear, with this message:
   

   
   
   Your username at the top right-hand corner will be greyed-out.

5. On the Windows taskbar, click on the network icon and reconnect to the Internet.
   (If you are running MSFS in full-screen mode, click ALT-ENTER to go to windowed mode to see the taskbar, or you could click on the Windows key on your keyboard).
   Hopefully, after a couple of seconds, you’ll get this message:
   

   
   
   And your username at the top right-hand corner will no longer be greyed-out. Click on it to confirm you are signed back in. You also might see MSFS trying to connect to the Multiplayer servers.

If MSFS freezes or CTDs during any one of steps 2 thru 5, that would suggest that the network is not the problem, and the root cause of the issue is elsewhere.

Let us know how it goes!

[DenraelG]

I am not at home today, so I cannot give it a whirl as you suggest… but if you watch the video I posted, there are no opening credit movies, and I have done nothing to eliminate them. Also in the video, note the “splash screen” you reference (I believe that being the one you posted under “2. Start MSFS…” pops up and disappears very quickly, on top of (or behind… point being they are both displayed at the same time) an update screen.

[SmotheryVase665]

Hi & thanks for that info. By “opening credit movies” I meant the Xbox / Asobo / Blackshark “movies” (for want of a better term) you see during the first 32 seconds of the MFS Load.mp4 file you referenced. Apologies if I was unclear about that.

The Installation Manager screen that is briefly seen at 0:34 is a known bug that has been resolved in the SU15 beta & will be rolled out to the release-build community when SU15 is released (now sometime in April).

If your Internet network link is disabled, I believe you won’t see the Dune screens, but the screenshot I posted in step 2, followed by the subsequent screens I posted. These screenshots were taken when I tested out this procedure this morning. Let’s see if you see the same!

[DenraelG]

So I finally got the chance to give your latest suggestion a try today.
((Note that I have to “Run as administrator” in order to make the following happen. Otherwise, I am stopped at the very beginning by the infamous “Insert disk” error.))

Anyway, if I disable my internet connection, everything starts out pretty much as you describe… the Xbox, Asobo, blackshark.ai, and trademarks text screens come and go as usual. I then get the Splash screen and Warning exactly as you show in step 2. But when I click OK on the warning, instead of the Welcome screen, I remain on the splash screen with an Error message:

After 1 1/2 minutes, the screen changes to Installation Manager , but the same warning remains:

At this point, not wanting to be a “quitter” I let it set. And set. And set. Nothing happens for 19 minutes while I have a sandwich, so at this point I click on the Error “quit” bar to see if we do indeed quit. Nope… we get this instead:

Which takes us immediately to the “Press any button…” video:

Pressing said button takes us to a totally black screen with the little white circle in the lower right corner, for about 30 seconds, at which time we get:

So we turn the internet back on, and hit “Okay”. This takes us back to the “Press any button…” video, which we do, getting the welcome note from Xbox.

Clicking on Let’s Go takes us (after 15 or 20 seconds of totally black screen) back to the Installation Manager screen again…

After another brief delay, this screen pops up for literally about a second, then disappears:

Then…

…right back to where we were 4 or 5 days ago.

[SmotheryVase665]

OK, Sorry that you had go through all that to get…back to where you were before.

I’m out of ideas, so suggest to take up @TheSevenflyer 's suggestion to open a Zendesk ticket here

Let us know how it goes.